The Bloom Series Box Set: Bloom & Fade (27 page)

Tears formed in her eyes and floated
into the air as tiny bubbles. They broke apart and dissolved like
powder in water.

“
I
had
to leave,” she said. “They would
have killed all of us.”

“
Who?”

She sighed. “Colton, can’t we talk
about something else? I want to know about you—about your
life.”

“
No, Mom, we can’t! Who
did this to you?”

“
I did it to
myself.”

“
What do you
mean?”

“
Nine years ago, a man
named Bernam came to our house and asked me to join him and his
group. He was trying to get as many of our kind together as he
could. I told him I wanted to live a normal life and that I didn’t
want to be involved with anything other than you and your father.
Bernam said there was a huge battle coming and that he needed all
the soldiers he could get. That was the word that made up my
mind.
Soldiers
.
He meant to start a war. When I tried to force him to leave, he
said he would kill everyone in my family unless I agreed to join
him.”

“
Dad thinks you left
because you fell in love with someone else.”

“
I knew he would think
so,” she said, shaking her head, “but it isn’t true. I love your
father, and I love you. I left so both of you could be
safe.”

“
It ruined his life,” said
Colton. “
And
mine.”

“
What should I have done,
let them kill all of us?”

Colton stood and turned away from her.
“No, just—I don’t know.” He looked around the small room and read
the titles of some of the books piled high against the wall. “So
you went with Bernam.”

“
For a time. He only
wanted to use me—and the rest of the men and women he had
threatened into joining him—to help him wipe out his enemies. He
was the bad guy. At that time, I had only just started to learn the
true potential of my own ability after ignoring it for so long. He
helped me to become stronger. But, in the end, I wasn’t strong
enough to defeat him.”

Colton felt the warmth in his body
draining quickly. He turned and looked at his mother. The soft
light glowing from her skin shimmered and grew brighter.

“
What happened?” asked
Colton.

“
I joined with a few
others to try and take him down. I was the strongest Conduit, so
one of the others offered me their ability in addition to my own.
This was before most of us knew that two abilities were not
compatible in one person. They are separate entities that cannot
mix.”

“
So you took your friend’s
power.”

She shook her head. “Only a Void can
take away, as well as help another to do it. But Cons can give
their power to another, even if they were born without a power of
their own.”

Colton thought of Reece.

“
My friend
gave
me his ability,”
she continued, “and I went to confront Bernam. I was already
starting to feel it going wrong inside me, but I mistook it for new
power.” She reached out and touched a pipe that ran down along the
wall from the ceiling. The light emanating from her body grew
brighter. “Bernam nearly killed me.”

“
Why didn’t he?” asked
Colton.

“
Because he thought it
would be more fun to watch me suffer. He didn’t know why I was in
so much pain, but he could tell that something was very wrong. He
thought it was something he had done to me on his own. I was
helpless. By the time Bernam left and one of my friends arrived and
told me how to get rid of my extra ability, it was too late. From
that point on, I had no control over my power. I can’t turn it off,
Colton. That is why I came here instead of going back home to you
and your father. Dormer built this room for me,” she said.
“Electricity runs through those pipes constantly. The only thing I
have been able to do successfully is to give off excess energy in
the form of light.”

She held up one of her hands and the
light surrounding it intensified.

“
But that’s not all,” she
said quietly. “My mind isn’t the same. There are moments when I
think I’m back home in Pittsburgh. I’ll see myself standing in your
bedroom, looking down at you while you sleep. Then, suddenly, I am
back in this room, screaming because I can’t do anything else. It
gets worse every day.” She shook her head. “Soon there will be
nothing left of me.”

Colton sat down next to her. “Come
home with me, Mom,” he said. “I can make a room like this for you.
You don’t have to stay here anymore.” A tear rolled down his
cheek.

“
My darling boy,” she
said, smiling. “I’m afraid it’s too late. I’m so
tired
, Colton. I’ve only
held on this long because I hoped against hope that I would be able
to see you again. And here you are. Look how strong you
are.”

“
I’m not strong at all,”
said Colton. He didn’t want to tell her his life was slowly
fading.

“
You
can
do something to help me,” she
said, sitting up straight. “Dormer told me that Bernam took away
your ability.”

Colton nodded. “What do you want me to
do?”

“
Don’t fight,” she
said.

She reached for him and pulled him
close, hugging him fiercely. Colton closed his eyes as the light on
her skin grew painfully bright.

“
I love you, Colton,” she
whispered.

Like an explosion in a vacuum, energy
flared within his chest and quickly disappeared. He felt it
disperse throughout his body and settle in his bones as a light
vibration.

The light in the room blinked out and
his mother collapsed onto the bed.

“
Mom!” he shouted. Colton
lifted her up and held her in his arms.

The door burst open and Dormer stood
silhouetted by the green light beyond. “What happened?!”

“
I don’t know!” said
Colton. “Help her!”

Dormer hurried to the bed and Colton
leaned his mother slowly into Dormer’s arms. Her skin no longer
glowed with soft white light. Dormer rested his palm on her
forehead, then checked her pulse.

“
No,” he said
quietly.

“
How do I give it back?”
demanded Colton.

“
What?”

“
She gave me her ability!
How do I give it back?”

“
I—I don’t know how to
explain it,” said Dormer. “It’s something you learn on your
own.”

“
There has to be a way,”
said Colton. “She said someone told her how to get rid of
it!”

Dormer shook his head, stunned into
silence.

“
I just got her back,”
said Colton. He reached out and pulled her back to him, cradling
her body gently.

Dormer stood and walked slowly from
the room, one hand covering his mouth.

Colton rested his palm against his
mother’s cheek and tried to force the power she had given him back
into her body. He clenched his teeth and imagined the energy
flowing from his hand and onto her skin. He felt it moving within
him, tracing along his bones like crawling snakes, but he could not
command it to leave.

He brushed a loose strand of white
hair from her face and kissed her forehead. One of his tears fell
onto her cheek and followed a shallow wrinkle.

“
I just got you back,” he
whispered.

Colton closed his eyes and
wept.

33

H
aven stood in the center of the training room and closed her
eyes.

Her target was a crater the size of a
dinner plate in the concrete wall at the other end of the long
room. She pictured it in her mind and held it there, suspended in
space. Slowly, the image of the blue ball of energy grew in the
darkness. The plate faded as the ball of swirling plasma consumed
it and continued to increase in size.

With great effort, Haven imagined
herself reaching into the core of the ball, past the molten outer
layers that parted around her arms as she moved closer to the
smooth, spherical center. She rested her palms against the cool
surface of the core and commanded the energy to flow into her
body.

It swirled over her arms and around
her shoulders, sinking into her skin and gathering along her spine.
The energy nested there, moving up and down her body like water
shifting in a moving container.

Haven opened her eyes and saw blue
light.

Through the ropes of
brilliant energy that crossed her vision, the crater in the far
wall looked like a psychedelic spiderweb. She held both of her arms
straight out in front of her, palms open toward the wall,
and
pushed
.

A huge bubble of blue
plasma swelled out from her palms and exploded with a fat
BLIP
. The room was
temporarily illuminated as if by a high-powered camera flash. The
bubble sent small glops of molten energy spinning into the air all
around her. Most of it dissipated before it hit the floor but some
of the pieces burned small, smoking holes into the concrete by her
feet.

What good am I if I can’t
control my ability?
she thought.
How can I save Noah? I’m useless.

Haven grit her teeth in anger and
closed her eyes again.

“
You’re trying too hard,”
someone said behind her.

She opened her eyes and turned
quickly. It was the boy they had brought back from the fight in
Bozeman. His eyes were red and puffy—he’d been crying.

“
How would you know,
anyway?” asked Haven.

“
I know it’s easier for me
when I don’t try to force it.”

Haven tried hard to find something in
his eyes to make her stay angry. She turned away, forcing the
sympathy that suddenly rose within her back down into the dark part
of her soul—the empty place where she tried to hide all of the
thoughts and emotions that she believed would slow her down on the
way to saving her little brother.

Regardless of what the
others wanted to do, she needed to
act
. No matter how dangerous it
would be, Haven knew she had to go after Noah.

“
I
have
to try hard,” she said with
irritation. “Otherwise I’m just a…” She paused, realizing that she
had just identified something that had been bothering her since the
moment she arrived at The Dome.

“
Otherwise you’re just a
kid playing a game for grown-ups,” said the boy.

She eyed him warily, unwilling to
concede that he was right.

“
Well, we’re not kids
anymore,” he continued.

She shook her head. “You
can say that all you want, but that doesn’t make it true. I was in
high school a few weeks ago, living a normal life. I was
happy
.”

“
And now you’re here,”
said Colton.

He walked toward her slowly, his hands
stuffed into the pockets of his dirty jeans. With each step, Haven
felt a small tingle at the base of her spine—a much less powerful
version of the sensation that she had felt while lying in the grass
in Bozeman, but it carried with it the same feeling of connection
that she experienced before.

“
There’s no going back to
the way things used to be,” he said. “Wherever you came
from—school, work, wherever—this is
it
now.” He gestured to the room
around them. “We have to fight back,” he said, more to himself than
to Haven. “We have to fight back before they take everything
away.”

“
Corva told me about your
mother,” said Haven, adopting a softer tone. “I’m very
sorry.”

He stepped closer and stopped a few
feet away, staring at the crater in the wall at the other end of
the room.

“
She gave me her ability,”
he said. “It doesn’t feel the way it did before. It’s shifting
inside of me, like it’s trying to find a comfortable place to
settle down. Dormer says it will get better in a couple of weeks
and I’ll be back to normal.” He laughed sharply, without humor.
“‘Normal’,” he said. “Whatever that means.” He turned to her. “I’m
Colton.”

Her hesitation faded more quickly than
she wanted. “Haven,” she said.

“
Look,” said Colton. “I
know you don’t trust me, but there’s something you need to know. On
the way to Bozeman—”

“
Where your friends killed
Elena,” interrupted Haven quickly.

“
They’re not my friends!
Well, Reece
was
my friend, but I just don’t know anymore. I don’t know
what
to think. Bernam
lied to me and everyone else. He—” Colton stopped and took a quick
breath. “I made a mistake. I believed in someone I shouldn’t have,
and now more people are dead. I’m trying to tell you that on the
way to Bozeman, I overheard Bernam and Alistair talking about a
little boy they were holding at the medical center. Alistair asked
Bernam what he wanted to do with the boy now that they had the
machine working properly, and Bernam gave this little smile and
waved his hand in the air as if he were swatting an annoying little
bug. Alistair had this grin on his face like…like he had been given
permission to do something terrible.”